Session 3P1b: Optics and Photonics 1Abstract| Control of spontaneously emitted light lies at the heart of quantum optics. It is
essential for diverse applications ranging from lasers, light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and quan-
tum information. According to the quantum electrodynamics theory, the spontaneous emission
(SE) of an atom can be a weak-coupling radiation process due to the vacuum °uctuations of
electromagnetic ¯eld. A suitable modi¯cation of inhomogeneous environment is required so that
the vacuum °uctuations controlling the SE can be manipulated. Inhibiting unwanted SE and
boosting desired ones will promote the novel optoelectronic designs tailored to industrial stan-
dard. The local density of states (LDOS) counts the number of electromagnetic modes where
photons can be emitted at the speci¯c location of the emitter, and can be interpreted as the
density of vacuum °uctuations. The inhibition or enhancement of SE boils down to how the
LDOS of photons is controlled.
In this work, the SE of the excited atoms in 2D arbitrary inhomogeneous environment has been
systematically studied. The LDOS determines the radiation dynamics of a point source (for
3D) or a line source (for 2D). In particular, it also determines the SE rate, and the LDOS
is represented by the electric dyadic Green's function. The numerical solution of the electric
Green's tensor has been accurately obtained by the ¯nite-di®erence frequency-domain method
with the proper approximations of the monopole and dipole sources. The SE of the atoms in
the photonic crystal and plasmonic metal plates has been comprehensively and comparatively
investigated. For both systems, the SE strongly depends on their respective dispersion relations
and could be modi¯ed or tuned by the ¯nite-structure or ¯nite-size e®ects. This work is important
for the SE engineering and optimized design of optoelectronic devices.published_or_final_versio
